This week Conservative MP John Carmichael and Heritage Minister James Moore stood in the lobby of the House of Commons flanked by Canadian flags, in the manner of car salesmen surrounded by banners saying, “Your buck goes farther here” and “Check under the hood and see!”

They were publicizing Mr. Carmichael’s private member’s bill, an Act Respecting the National Flag of Canada, which would defend the country from the sadly underreported scourge of flag-hating. If Bill C-288 makes it into law, all Canadians will have the right to fly our national flag – and woe betide those who try to prevent them. A sigh of relief must have risen from all the people who’ve been cowering in their basements for years, too terrified to open the boxes marked, “From Sheila Copps.”

What would the great Tory father John Diefenbaker make of this celebration of the flag, which he fought so furiously before its introduction and which he once compared unfavourably to the national flag of Peru?